Water treatment facilities typically treat three separate streams of water in the beverage industry. That is, each of the influent water from a municipal source, the low brix stream and the high brix stream, is treated separately. In that regard, influent water in the beverage industry is known to be treated with either a cold lime softener, using lime-ferric chloride and anionic flocculent, for hardness and alkalinity removal. Unfortunately, this treatment does not remove sodium in the water, and the sodium concentration must be at a level below approximately 14 parts per million (ppm) for a single serving diet drink. More recently known influent water systems include a nano-filter or reverse osmosis membrane to treat water. While these filters and membranes remove hardness, alkalinity, bacteria, viruses, and monovalent ions from the permeate, these “reject” streams required disposal directly to the sewer system.
Treatment of water for beverages, in which the water supply is taken from municipal influent water has its own particular problems. In particular, potable water used for the processing and which is purchased from the municipality usually possesses a high salt content, especially in areas where salt (sodium) is used on public roadways during inclement weather. In addition, federal law limits the concentration of the sodium that can be in a beverage product. Beverage manufactures typically use potable water to dilute syrups purchased from vendors.
Beverage manufactures are also in need of recovering and reusing the waste streams that result from the manufacture of the beverage products. In certain instances, a plurality of wastewater streams are created, such as a low sugar (low brix) waste stream and a high sugar (high brix) waste stream. The sugar unit of measurement is the “brix”, which is an indication of the refractive index or sugar content in a particular composition.
So, for example, a manufacturer that rinses or washes its equipment after preparing a particular beverage, such that same equipment can be used for the manufacture of another beverage, will initiate the washout process. At the beginning, this process will result in a high brix, low volume byproduct. Toward the end of the washout process, the sugar content on the machinery reduces, thereby resulting in a low brix, high volume flow.
The low brix waste stream can be discharged to a municipal waste treatment facility for processing and filtration. The municipality is generally prepared to receive such a waste stream as the municipal waste treatment facility can accommodate a reduced amount of sugar.
The low brix stream is usually treated by discharging it directly to the sewer and accordingly, the facility undertaking such discharge will incur a surcharge based upon a Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) or BioChemical Oxygen Demand (BOD) loading. Typically, a discharge stream may also contain up to two thousand parts per million (ppm) Total Suspended Solids (TSS), which may similarly incur surcharge. Alternatively, it is known in the art to treat the low brix wastewater with some type of biological system. Such a system may include a fixed film reactor or a suspended growth activated sludge system. A membrane bioreactor may also be used. Thereafter, the treated wastewater from the biological system is then discharged to the municipal waste treatment facility.
Unfortunately, the high brix waste stream cannot be directly discharged to the municipal waste treatment facility, as its existing equipment will typically be unable to treat the high brix (organic pollution related to sugars) from the waste stream. Accordingly, the beverage manufacturer may be required to pay a third party vendor to take the high brix stream and transport it away for subsequent use or processing. This adds tremendous cost and resources to remove the high brix stream.
In contrast, the high brix waste water, if it is segregated from the low brix waste water, is collected in tanks and then removed for disposal to another location, at a substantial fee per gallon, for further handling or discharge in an environmentally acceptable manner.
Such contaminated streams contain sugars, phosphates, etc. The sugar content would inevitably vary considerably depending upon the particular process that had been used. For example, vats and bottling units that are dumped and cleaned may cause a significant spike in the wastewater sugar content. Accordingly, a brix monitor is used to segregate the wastewater stream into both high and low sugar concentrations, or high and low brix streams. A low brix content waste stream is typically approximately less than 0.2 brix or less than 2000 ppm BOD. In contrast, a high brix waste stream typically ranges from one to ten brix and normally between about 2 to 5 brix or 20,000 to 50,000 ppm BOD.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to use and dispose in a recycled manner the streams of sodium, low brix and high brix.